1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for assisting a driver occupying a seat within a vehicle traveling on a road.
2. Description of Related Art
JP-A 2001-199296 discloses a driver's seat including vibrators on the right and left of a head rest, a back portion, and a seat portion. An obstacle around a vehicle approaching the vehicle is detected and determined whether a risk is high. If it is determined that the approaching obstacle has a high risk, this information is transmitted to the driver by exciting at least one vibrator indicating a direction toward the approaching obstacle.
In the commonly assigned U.S. patent application No. 11/047,577 (Japanese agent's docket No: JNIS-1200), which claims the priority derived from Japanese Patent Application No. 2004-032465 filed Feb. 9, 2004 and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/052,812 (Japanese agent's docket No: JNIS-1201), which claims the priority derived from Japanese Patent Application No. 2004-032466 filed Feb. 9, 2004, the assignee has proposed a driver assisting system that transmits an in-lane lateral position by haptic inputs via different portions of a driver's seat. According to the proposed system, a pressure input is applied to the driver by selectively activating actuators, which are arranged to modify, in contour, different portions of the driver's seat.
The proposed driver assisting systems are satisfactory to some extent. However, a need remains for transmitting a plurality of different pieces of information to the driver other than the in-lane lateral position.